


Tall Order

by ishouldwritethatdown



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Ballroom Dancing, Espionage, Height Differences, M/M, Undercover, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-21 23:31:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8264470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishouldwritethatdown/pseuds/ishouldwritethatdown
Summary: When a thief who pays 50 million creds to have all of his suits customised to include 80% more pockets invites a Private Eye who finds all of his clothes in a dumpster to a fancy ballroom party, you can be sure that neither one of them is there for the salmon bites on the buffet table. Peter tries to flirt with Juno, Juno tries to hate Peter, and both are gigantic disasters who need to kiss already. This kind of snowballed out of a really small prompt but I hope you like it.





	

Juno was a little ashamed to admit that he’d actually had to wipe the grime off his bathroom mirror to see anything in it. For an untold amount of time the only thing he had done to get ready in the morning was sling on his holster. Anything else had become a hassle.

He fastened and refastened the brooch in his hand, unable to get it to sit exactly right on his dress. The pin was a silver rose about the size of a bottlecap, and he was absolutely not going to tell anyone that he bought it for three creds in a thrift store. To tell the truth, he hadn’t even been looking for jewellery. He had actually been searching for ten pounds of napalm, but the owner wouldn’t let him leave the store without buying anything.

Juno cursed and left the brooch slightly crooked on the dress. Nureyev was bound to outshine him regardless of the alignment of his pin. After smoothing the black fabric out, he ran his fingers absent-mindedly over the intricate lace pattern that covered his collarbone. He became transfixed by the tiny cuts and scars that decorated his face as well as the long pale line that stretched across his cheeks over his nose, his own personal lace fused into him.

Blinking a few times, he snapped himself out of it. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, keeping eye contact with his reflection. When he left the bathroom, the first thing he saw was the person sitting on his desk.

After a small splutter, he exclaimed, “Dammit, Nureyev! How the hell did you get in here?” Even as he was saying it, he noticed that the window was ajar. “For once, just once, could you come to the door like a normal person?” he asked tiredly.

“But oh, Detective, that would ruin the fun,” Peter enthused, his fox’s grin gleaming. He jumped to his feet with all too much vigour for a man in heels and looked Juno up and down.

Defensive, Juno crossed his arms. Noticing this, Peter took two steps with his absurdly long legs and smiled like he was about to sink his teeth into him. “Juno, darling, I love your pin,” he complimented. “And I see you’ve gone for the classic Juno Steel look of black-on-black-on-silver.”

“As opposed to the merry-go-round I’m looking at?” Juno replied, gesturing to the shimmering rainbow that Nureyev was wearing. In all fairness, the man looked amazing, but Juno was pretty sure that anyone else wearing a bedazzled sundress featuring a sewn-in collar and a golden tie would look ridiculous. This only served to prove his notion that Peter was going to actually blind anyone who looked too directly at him and therefore no one would care about a misaligned pin.

Peter grinned, and then unwrinkled the lace sleeves of Juno’s dress, his hands warm and soft. Juno hated how he missed them whenever they left his body for a fraction of a second. “Loosen up, Juno, you’re even more tightly wound than usual.”

“I don’t like this job,” he huffed. “Anyone I have to dress up this fancy to meet is someone that could have me so professionally killed that everyone will think I went to live on a farm in the outer rim.”

“I’m not going to let that happen,” Nureyev replied decisively. He said it steadily, truthfully, taking care to make sure Juno knew he meant it. The lighthearted tone was back into his voice so quickly that Juno half-thought he imagined the steely-serious statement. “Besides, the more money a person has, the easier it is to get past security. Every thief knows that.”

“This isn’t a score, Nureyev. This is a case,” Juno responded forcefully. If he knew one thing at all about working with Nureyev, it was that you couldn’t let him work out a compromise. Stealing just a few hundred creds while we have the chance would snowball into breaking into a high-security vault for the priceless rubies before you knew it. Juno refused to be sweet-talked into criminal activity. Again.

Peter pouted a little, theatrically. “I know, Juno. I’m only contributing my knowledge of the trade.”

“Investigations are my trade.”

“Oh, Juno, would you lighten up?” Peter rolled his eyes. “Are you going to sulk all night?”

Juno responded by turning on his heels and walking out of the apartment. “We’re holding up the car,” he called over his shoulder, snagging his leather jacket from the hook on his way out. Nureyev tutted and followed, out-of-place regal footsteps clopping distinctively against the floor.

In the car that had been sent for them, Peter attempted to pick up the conversation by suggesting they go over the plan.

“Not much to go over, honey,” Juno said, a sharp edge on the final word. He might still be a little bitter than seemingly every time he and Nureyev went undercover together, they were married. “Isn’t the plan basically to talk to Harrelson and avoid getting skinned alive in the process?”

Peter sighed, and was quiet. Juno thought he might have finally decided to shut up, until he said, “I know this isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, J- darling, but you could at least admit that you find this sort of thing enjoyable.”

Juno only shot him a seething look, and the rest of the journey was taken in silence.

He had time to think it over before they arrived at the venue of the party, and he knew that getting caught up in all Nureyev’s mild annoyances would end badly, especially on a job as high-stakes as this. In making eye contact with his fake husband once on the way into the hall, Juno knew they understood each other.

Getting booked into the party was easy – Peter had indeed been right that the richer someone was, the easier to break in. Once they started trusting computers more than people, it was simple enough to hack in and organise your cover identity an invitation to a party.

The ballroom was gigantic, probably big enough to fit Juno’s entire apartment building. Their mark wasn’t on the floor, instead elevated high above his guests on the top balcony. Juno caught himself making a disgusted face at the elitist prick swishing his wine around instead of drinking it, and then remembered that he was supposed to be playing an aristocratic lawyer.

“May I have this dance?” Peter asked, extending a hand. His loving smile was frustratingly convincing.

“Sure,” Juno replied, taking the hand and moving out onto the dancefloor with him. One hand on the shoulder, one on the hip. He was trying to focus on the technical, remembering the steps of the dance, but he could feel the warmth of Nureyev’s hands through the dress, the quick self-assuredness of his movements, the easy, comfortable smile he wore to distract from his scanning, calculating eyes.

“I count fifteen guards,” Peter informed him under his breath, his smile as still as a ventriloquist’s. “That, plus the twenty-seven cameras in the schematics, equals zero blind spots.”

“Well, at least there’s a buffet this time,” Juno muttered. He thought he might’ve seen a genuine smile flicker through Peter’s fake one for just a moment.

Juno tried to concentrate on the job at hand, but all he could think about was that stupid beautiful cologne filling his senses, a smell that clung like algae to his clothes and his mind. He looked down, trying to escape from it somehow, but all he could see was the shine of his rose pin as it reflected the thousands of glittering jewels adorning Nureyev’s dress.

“Eyes up, Juno, I didn’t just bring you for your pretty face,” Peter reminded him.

‘Eyes up’ in this case, probably wasn’t an ideal choice of words since Juno’s eye level rested roughly an inch above Nureyev’s shoulder, and he couldn’t actually see anything of importance.

Juno looked at Nureyev’s soft, gentle, deadly face, assessing their options, planning every possible escape, and dancing without even thinking about it. Not a hair out of place, not a possibility unthought. It was completely unbearable.

Juno took hold of Peter’s brightly coloured tie and pulled him down into a kiss. He had taken him by surprise, but in a matter of milliseconds Peter was kissing back and pulling Juno onto his tiptoes. Nureyev’s beautiful stink worked its way into Juno’s mouth, his chest, his entire body, filling him up with sweet, overpowering flavour.

They pulled apart, pulling deep breaths from the air, and if you looked close enough you could probably see the stars in Peter’s eyes. Slightly flustered, very warm to the touch, he mumbled, “You crumpled my tie,” in an almost dreamy manner.

The thrill and idiocy of the whole thing rendered Juno’s would-be snarky reply useless. Instead, he tucked Peter’s ruffled tie back into the dress roughly and shrugged.

“Harrelson’s coming down the stairs,” Nureyev observed, the ventriloquist act dropped. In a swift series of motions, he dragged Juno off to the side of the dancefloor and plucked a glass of wine from a passing waiter’s tray.

“What’s the play?” Juno asked, looking between the man they were supposed to be investigating and Peter, who was sniffing the wine and making a face.

“This wine is terrible,” he replied, already moving towards Harrelson, who was, for the first time in the night, not flanked by muscly bodyguards. Juno rolled his eyes and followed, wishing that once, just once, he could get a straight answer out of this guy. It wasn’t until a split second before he did it that Juno realised what he was about to do.

With a crash that was both lost in the hubbub and utterly deafening at the same time, Nureyev spilled his glass of bad wine all over the target. So much for not getting skinned alive.


End file.
